Category: Scientific Suppression & Manipulation

—After investigating psychiatry for two decades, I’m confident that, if we could go back and rewrite history, deleting all psychiatrists on the planet, so they’d never exist—deleting their diagnoses and their drugs—this would have resulted in a massive upsurge in mental health, moving forward—

The Daily Mail: “A group of leading psychiatrists told a conference that Donald Trump has clear hallmarks of mental illness that compromise his role as president. Twenty-five researchers made a drastic break away from ethical standards by meeting at Yale University on Thursday to discuss evidence questioning the commander-in-chief’s mental health.”

Psychiatrist Allen Frances, who has played a central role in defining mental disorders, disagrees. He wrote in the NY Times: “Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled [Mr. Trump as having] narcissistic personality disorder. He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill.”

Dr. Frances makes an interesting point. He distinguishes between behavior and earning a badge for having a particular mental disorder.

For example, a person can be sad, but that alone doesn’t make him a candidate for the label, “clinical depression.” A person can take aggressive actions against authority, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is suffering from Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

Consider the accusation that Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). What does that mean? What is the official definition of NPD? Here is an excerpt from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official bible of the American Psychiatric Association. Go ahead, plow through it, it’ll only take a minute:

“The definition of NPD states that it comprises of a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts by early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonally oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
• Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
• A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes”

“…No actual physical characteristics are seen with NPD, but patients may have concurrent substance abuse, which may be seen in the clinical examination.”

Got it? Now, think about this: NOWHERE IN THE DEFINITION IS THERE ANY DEFINING DIAGNOSTIC TEST.

If you have the tenacity, read through the whole psychiatric DSM bible and you will see for yourself.

Or read this brief exchange. In a PBS Frontline episode, “Does ADHD Exist?” Dr. Russell Barkley, an eminent professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, spelled out the fraud clearly.

Here it is.

PBS FRONTLINE INTERVIEWER: Skeptics say that there’s no biological marker—that it [ADHD] is the one condition out there where there is no blood test, and that no one knows what causes it.

BARKLEY: That’s tremendously naïve, and it shows a great deal of illiteracy about science and about the mental health professions. A disorder doesn’t have to have a blood test to be valid. If that were the case, all mental disorders would be invalid…There is no lab test for any mental disorder right now in our science. That doesn’t make them invalid.

Oh, indeed, that does make them invalid. Utterly and completely. All 300 mental disorders. Because there are no defining tests of any kind to back up the diagnosis.

Psychiatrists can sway and tap dance all they like and they won’t escape the noose around their necks. We are looking at a science that isn’t a science.

That’s called fraud. Rank fraud.

Imagine this. You walk into a doctor’s office, you talk with him for a few minutes, and then he says: “You have cancer. You need to start chemo at once.”

After you recover, you say, “You didn’t give me a test.”

And he says, “Well, we don’t need a test. We know what the symptoms are because we convened a high-level meeting of oncologists last year, and we listed the answers to the questions I just asked you. You gave those telltale answers. So we start chemo tomorrow. We may also need to surgically remove an organ or two before we’re done.”

That’s psychiatry. That’s the way it works.

Those boys have quite a con going. And now, from a few hundred miles away, they’ve diagnosed a sitting president.

Well, why wouldn’t they? They’ve been shucking and jiving all the way to the bank for the entirety of their professional lives.

Do you like Trump? Do you hate him? Do you think he’s nuts? Sane? Whatever you believe, it has nothing to do with the official pronouncements of psychiatry.

Over the past 35 years, I’ve exposed as least as much fraudulent science as any reporter around. That’s just a fact.

I mention it, because one would expect I’ve learned a few lessons in the process.

And I have.

Government-backed science exists because it is a fine weapon to use, in order to force an agenda of control over the population.

We aren’t talking about knowledge here. Knowledge is irrelevant. What counts is: ‘How can we fabricate something that looks like the truth?’

I keep pointing this out: we’re dealing with reality builders. In this case, they make their roads and fences and buildings out of data, and they massage and invent the data out of thin air to suit their purposes. After all, they also invent money out of thin air.

Since 1987, one of my goals as a reporter has been to educate the public about false science.

Between then and now, I have found that, with remarkably few exceptions, mainstream reporters are studiously indifferent to false science.

They shy away from it. They pretend “it couldn’t be.” They refuse to consider facts. They and their editors parrot “the experts.”

Official science has a stranglehold on major media. It has the force of a State religion. When you stop and think about it, official science is, in a significant sense, a holy church. Therefore, it is no surprise that the church’s spokespeople would wield power over major information outlets.

These prelates invent, guard, and dispense “what is known.” That was precisely the role of the Roman Church in times past. And those professionals within the modern Church of Science are severely punished when they leave the fold and accuse their former masters of lies and crimes. They are blackballed, discredited, and stripped of their licenses. At the very least.

Totalitarian science lets you know you’re living in a totalitarian society.

The government, the press, the mega-corporations, the prestigious foundations, the academic institutions, the “humanitarian” organizations say:

“This is the disease. This is its name. This is what causes it. This is the drug that treats it. This is the vaccine that prevents it.”

“This is how accurate diagnosis is done. These are the tests. These are the possible results and what they mean.”

“Here are the genes. This is what they do. This is how they can be changed and substituted and manipulated. These are the outcomes.”

“These are the data and the statistics. They are correct. There can be no argument about them.”

“This is life. These are the components of life. All change and improvement result from our management of the components.”

“This is the path. It is governed by truth which our science reveals. Walk the path. We will inform you when you stray. We will report new improvements.”

“This is the end. You can go no farther. You must give up the ghost. We will remember you.”

We are now witnessing the acceleration of Official Science. Of course, that term is an internal contradiction. But the State shrugs and moves forward.

The notion that the State can put its seal on favored science, enforce it, and punish its competitors, is anathema to a free society.

For example: declaring that psychiatrists can appear in court as expert witnesses, when none of the 300 so-called mental disorders listed in the psychiatric literature are diagnosed by laboratory tests.

For example: stating that vaccination is mandatory, in order to protect the vaccinated (who are supposed to be immune) from the unvaccinated. An absurdity on its face.

For example: announcing that the science of climate change is “settled,” when there are, in fact, huge numbers of researchers who disagree. —And then, drafting legislation and issuing executive orders based on the decidedly unsettled science.

For example: officially approving the release and sale of medical drugs (“safe and effective”) which go on to kill, at a conservative estimate, 100,000 Americans every year. And then refusing to investigate or punish the agents of these drug approvals (the FDA).

For example: permitting the widespread use of genetically modified food crops, based on no studies of their impact on human health. And then, arbitrarily announcing that the herbicide, Roundup, for which many of these crops are specifically designed, is non-toxic.

For example: declaring and promoting the existence of various epidemics, when the viruses purportedly causing them are not proven to exist or not proven to cause human illness (SARS, West Nile, Swine Flu, etc.)

A few of you reading this have been with me since 1988, when I published my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century. Among other conclusions, I pointed out that HIV had never been shown to cause human illness; the front-line drug given to AIDS patients, AZT, was overwhelmingly toxic; and what was being called AIDS was actually a diverse number immune-suppressing conditions.

Others of you have found my work more recently. I always return to the subject of false science, because it is the most powerful long-term instrument for repression, political control, and destruction of human life.

As I’ve stated on many occasions, medical science is ideal for mounting and launching covert ops aimed at populations—because it appears to be politically neutral, without any allegiance to State interests.

Unfortunately, medical science, on many fronts, has been hijacked and taken over. The profit motive is one objective, but beyond that, there is a more embracing goal:

Totalitarian control.

On the issue of vaccines, I’ve written much about their dangers and ineffectiveness. But also consider this: the push for mandatory vaccination goes a long way toward creating a herd effect—which is really a social construction.

In other words, parents are propagandized to think of themselves as a kind of synthetic artificial “community.”

“Here we are. We are the fathers and mothers. We must all protect our children against the outliers, the rebels, the defectors, the crazy ones who refuse to vaccinate their own children. We are all in this together. They are the threat. The enemy. We are good. We know the truth. They are evil.”

This “community of the willing” are dedicated to what the government tells them. They are crusaders imbued with group-think. They run around promoting “safety and protection.” This group consciousness is entirely an artifact, propelled by official science.

The crusaders are, in effect, agents of the State.

They are created by the State.

Androids.

They live in an absurd Twilight Zone where fear of germs (the tiny invisible terrorists) demands coercive action against the individuals who see through the whole illusion.

This is what official science can achieve. This is how it can enlist obedient foot soldiers and spies who don’t have the faintest idea about how they’re being used.

This is a variant on Orwell’s 1984. The citizens are owned by the all-embracing State, but they aren’t even aware of it.

That’s quite a trick.

One of my favorite examples of double-think or reverse-think is the antibody test. It is given to diagnosis diseases. Antibodies are immune-system scouts sent out to identify germ-intruders, which can then be wiped out by other immune-system troops.

Prior to 1985, the prevailing view of a positive antibody test was: the patient is doing well; his body detected the germ and dispensed with it. After 1985, the view was suddenly: this is bad news; the patient is sick or he is on the verge of getting sick; he has the germ in his body; it does harm.

Within the medical community, no one (with very few exceptions) raised hell over this massive switch. It was accepted. It was actually good for business. Now, many more people could be labeled “needs treatment,” whereas before, they would have been labeled “healthy.”

While I was writing my first book, AIDS INC., in 1987-8, I wrote the FDA asking about a possible AIDS vaccine. I was told the following: every person given such a vaccine would, of course, produce antibodies against HIV. That is the whole purpose of a vaccine: to produce antibodies.

However, I was informed, patients receiving this vaccine would be given a letter to carry with them, in case they were ever tested for HIV and came up positive. The letter would explain that the antibodies causing the positive test were the result of the vaccine, not the result of “natural” action inside the patient’s body.

In other words, the very same antibodies were either protective against AIDS (good) or indicative of deadly disease (bad).

This was the contradictory and ridiculous and extraordinary pronouncement of official science.

It carries over into every disease for which an antibody test is administered. If a vaccine against disease X is given, it delivers immunity, because it produces antibodies. But if a diagnostic test for disease X reveals the presence of the same antibodies, naturally produced in the body, this is taken as a sign of illness.

Extrapolated to a more general level, the Word is: synthetic medical treatment is good; the action of the body to heal itself is incompetent.

This is a type of superstition that would astonish even the most “primitive” societies.

It no longer astonishes me. I see it everywhere in official science.

From the medical establishment’s point of view, being alive is a medical condition.

The most useful politicians—as far as official science is concerned—are those who automatically promote its findings. Such politicians are lifted into prominence. They are champions of the Science Matrix. They never ask questions. They never doubt. They never make waves. They blithely travel their merry way into new positions of power, knowing they have enormous elite support behind them. When they need to lie, they lie. They are taught that those who question or reject official science are a tiny ‘demographic’ who can be ignored during election campaigns. ‘Don’t worry about them. They don’t count.’ These politicians are never in the trenches with the people on issues of health.

The elite Plan is universal collectivism, in which all citizens are atoms of a giant molecule. Many lies need to be told in order to make that dream/nightmare come true. If some of those lies are about science, so much the better. People believe in science.

Think about the agendas behind universal vaccination, climate change, universal psychiatric treatment, GMO food, and other ‘science-based’ frauds. They all imply a model, in which individuals give up their power in exchange for ‘doing good’ and becoming members of the largest group in the world: ‘disabled’ people with needs that must be addressed and satisfied.

Instead of supporting the liberation of the individual, the controllers want to squash it. Why? Because they fear individual power. It is forever the unpredictable wild card. They want a society in which every thought an individual thinks connects him to a greater whole—and if that sounds attractive, understand that this Whole is a fiction, intentionally faked to resemble a genuine oceanic feeling. The elite Whole is ultimately a trance-like fiction that will slow down time to a crawl, and shrink space to a sliver, and focus attention on a single mandate: wait for the next instruction from above, content in the knowledge that it will benefit all of humanity.”

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

In these pages, I’ve emphasized that mainstream news often fails to follow up on their own stories.

They publish a shocking account of a scandal, and then they drop it like a hot potato.

Why? There are several reasons, but the most important is: the scandal is too revealing. It indicts an institution or organization that, in the long run, must be protected.

In 2014-15, stories appeared in the press about the phenomenal corruption of the FBI evidence lab. But since then, there has been very little follow-up. I find no compelling evidence that the federal government has fixed the problem.

Here is a sample of the 2014-15 stories:

April 20, 2015, The Atlantic: “…the Washington Post made clear Saturday in an article that begins with a punch to the gut… ‘Nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,’ the newspaper reported, adding that ‘the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death’.”

August 12, 2014, New Scientist: “…the initial results were released of an ongoing review of thousands of criminal cases in which FBI scientists’ testimony may have led to wrongful convictions – including for some people now on death row…[an FBI source states] ’we teach these people [lab techs in training] for two weeks, and they would go back to their laboratories with a certificate of completion and be told: Great you’re qualified to do this [analysis of evidence] – here’s your caseload.’”

Washington Post, April 18, 2015: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

“Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.”

“The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.”

Giant long-term scandal and corruption. The story is covered. Then it disappears.

Here is one reason why. If the press outlets continued to search out every aspect of the story, they would come upon numerous prosecutors who routinely relied on false FBI lab reports in trials. Some of those prosecutors would be exposed for knowingly accepting fake evidence from the FBI, in order to make their cases.

The scandal would spread like ink on a blotter.

Major media news picks their spots. They choose to pound on certain stories day after day, in an effort to convince the public of certain “facts.” They studiously refuse to dig and keep digging on other stories, hoping the public will forget.

Remember this, forget that.

Journalism schools don’t teach their students that this is the way to do news. After graduating and finding jobs, young reporters catch on.

They catch on and go along.

That’s how their ideals crumble and disintegrate.

That’s how they become agents and blunt weapons for their bosses.

That’s how they become alcoholics and denizens traveling through a dim underworld of lies.

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature‘s survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research.

The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.

Data on how much of the scientific literature is reproducible are rare and generally bleak. The best-known analyses, from psychology1 and cancer biology2, found rates of around 40% and 10%, respectively. Our survey respondents were more optimistic: 73% said that they think that at least half of the papers in their field can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.

The results capture a confusing snapshot of attitudes around these issues, says Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “At the current time there is no consensus on what reproducibility is or should be.” But just recognizing that is a step forward, he says. “The next step may be identifying what is the problem and to get a consensus.”

Failing to reproduce results is a rite of passage, says Marcus Munafo, a biological psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who has a long-standing interest in scientific reproducibility. When he was a student, he says, “I tried to replicate what looked simple from the literature, and wasn’t able to. Then I had a crisis of confidence, and then I learned that my experience wasn’t uncommon.”

The challenge is not to eliminate problems with reproducibility in published work. Being at the cutting edge of science means that sometimes results will not be robust, says Munafo. “We want to be discovering new things but not generating too many false leads.”

The scale of reproducibility

But sorting discoveries from false leads can be discomfiting. Although the vast majority of researchers in our survey had failed to reproduce an experiment, less than 20% of respondents said that they had ever been contacted by another researcher unable to reproduce their work. Our results are strikingly similar to another online survey of nearly 900 members of the American Society for Cell Biology (see go.nature.com/kbzs2b). That may be because such conversations are difficult. If experimenters reach out to the original researchers for help, they risk appearing incompetent or accusatory, or revealing too much about their own projects.

A minority of respondents reported ever having tried to publish a replication study. When work does not reproduce, researchers often assume there is a perfectly valid (and probably boring) reason. What’s more, incentives to publish positive replications are low and journals can be reluctant to publish negative findings. In fact, several respondents who had published a failed replication said that editors and reviewers demanded that they play down comparisons with the original study.

Nevertheless, 24% said that they had been able to publish a successful replication and 13% had published a failed replication. Acceptance was more common than persistent rejection: only 12% reported being unable to publish successful attempts to reproduce others’ work; 10% reported being unable to publish unsuccessful attempts.

Survey respondent Abraham Al-Ahmad at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo expected a “cold and dry rejection” when he submitted a manuscript explaining why a stem-cell technique had stopped working in his hands. He was pleasantly surprised when the paper was accepted3. The reason, he thinks, is because it offered a workaround for the problem.

Others place the ability to publish replication attempts down to a combination of luck, persistence and editors’ inclinations. Survey respondent Michael Adams, a drug-development consultant, says that work showing severe flaws in an animal model of diabetes has been rejected six times, in part because it does not reveal a new drug target. By contrast, he says, work refuting the efficacy of a compound to treat Chagas disease was quickly accepted4.

The corrective measures

One-third of respondents said that their labs had taken concrete steps to improve reproducibility within the past five years. Rates ranged from a high of 41% in medicine to a low of 24% in physics and engineering. Free-text responses suggested that redoing the work or asking someone else within a lab to repeat the work is the most common practice. Also common are efforts to beef up the documentation and standardization of experimental methods.

Any of these can be a major undertaking. A biochemistry graduate student in the United Kingdom, who asked not to be named, says that efforts to reproduce work for her lab’s projects doubles the time and materials used — in addition to the time taken to troubleshoot when some things invariably don’t work. Although replication does boost confidence in results, she says, the costs mean that she performs checks only for innovative projects or unexpected results.

Consolidating methods is a project unto itself, says Laura Shankman, a postdoc studying smooth muscle cells at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. After several postdocs and graduate students left her lab within a short time, remaining members had trouble getting consistent results in their experiments. The lab decided to take some time off from new questions to repeat published work, and this revealed that lab protocols had gradually diverged. She thinks that the lab saved money overall by getting synchronized instead of troubleshooting failed experiments piecemeal, but that it was a long-term investment.

Irakli Loladze, a mathematical biologist at Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska, estimates that efforts to ensure reproducibility can increase the time spent on a project by 30%, even for his theoretical work. He checks that all steps from raw data to the final figure can be retraced. But those tasks quickly become just part of the job. “Reproducibility is like brushing your teeth,” he says. “It is good for you, but it takes time and effort. Once you learn it, it becomes a habit.”

One of the best-publicized approaches to boosting reproducibility is pre-registration, where scientists submit hypotheses and plans for data analysis to a third party before performing experiments, to prevent cherry-picking statistically significant results later. Fewer than a dozen people mentioned this strategy. One who did was Hanne Watkins, a graduate student studying moral decision-making at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Going back to her original questions after collecting data, she says, kept her from going down a rabbit hole. And the process, although time consuming, was no more arduous than getting ethical approval or formatting survey questions. “If it’s built in right from the start,” she says, “it’s just part of the routine of doing a study.”

The cause

The survey asked scientists what led to problems in reproducibility. More than 60% of respondents said that each of two factors — pressure to publish and selective reporting — always or often contributed. More than half pointed to insufficient replication in the lab, poor oversight or low statistical power. A smaller proportion pointed to obstacles such as variability in reagents or the use of specialized techniques that are difficult to repeat.

But all these factors are exacerbated by common forces, says Judith Kimble, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: competition for grants and positions, and a growing burden of bureaucracy that takes away from time spent doing and designing research. “Everyone is stretched thinner these days,” she says. And the cost extends beyond any particular research project. If graduate students train in labs where senior members have little time for their juniors, they may go on to establish their own labs without having a model of how training and mentoring should work. “They will go off and make it worse,” Kimble says.

What can be done?

Respondents were asked to rate 11 different approaches to improving reproducibility in science, and all got ringing endorsements. Nearly 90% — more than 1,000 people — ticked “More robust experimental design” “better statistics” and “better mentorship”. Those ranked higher than the option of providing incentives (such as funding or credit towards tenure) for reproducibility-enhancing practices. But even the lowest-ranked item — journal checklists — won a whopping 69% endorsement.

The survey — which was e-mailed to Nature readers and advertised on affiliated websites and social-media outlets as being ‘about reproducibility’ — probably selected for respondents who are more receptive to and aware of concerns about reproducibility. Nevertheless, the results suggest that journals, funders and research institutions that advance policies to address the issue would probably find cooperation, says John Ioannidis, who studies scientific robustness at Stanford University in California. “People would probably welcome such initiatives.” About 80% of respondents thought that funders and publishers should do more to improve reproducibility.

“It’s healthy that people are aware of the issues and open to a range of straightforward ways to improve them,” says Munafo. And given that these ideas are being widely discussed, even in mainstream media, tackling the initiative now may be crucial. “If we don’t act on this, then the moment will pass, and people will get tired of being told that they need to do something.”

The NEVER-retracted vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study that revealed significantly higher odds in risks of chronic illness among vaccinated children is back online. But will Retraction Watch admit it launched the attack to discredit it? Will Snopes fact-check itself? If not, why not?

The first-ever study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated American children (and a subset study) published two weeks ago in the peer-reviewed Journal of Translational Science have reappeared online after briefly disappearing while under fire from a small band of Skeptics and the staff at Retraction Watch, an organization that reports Science retraction news. Snopes, the fact-checking website, is still misreporting that the study has been retracted, even while it sits, published, in the science journal’s pages.

It is a troubling saga unfolding in the scientific publishing world, and it is worth paying attention to because it’s revealing of powerful forces in that realm that are trying to censor scientific research and to shield important data from public viewing. Not at all the methodical and logical sort of thing you would expect from modern scientific types. It looks more like a secret 17th century Salem witch trial…interrupted.

Most readers here will be aware of Anthony Mawson et al.’s pivotal pilot study on the health of homeschooled American children. It is one of very few studies to examine the explosion of once rare disorders and conditions affecting modern children (all the millions of 21st century First World earaches, allergies, hayfever, ADD, neurodevelopmental disorders and autism, that is damaging young children’s brains in spiking numbers). And it is the only study (yes, the ONLY study to contain totally unvaccinated American subjects.) There are no other studies of American children who have never had a vaccine compared to kids with the motherload of CDC protection.

The researchers cautiously asked a logical, but unorthodox question: is it possible that all this immune –mediated disease has anything to do with the immune-mediating drugs that children are given in doses five times that of their parents? (And yes, autism is brain damage but it is almost certainly the result of a damaged immune system). Could it have anything to do with the 50 doses of 15 immune-stimulating vaccines before age six compared to the three doses of three vaccines the last generation — that wasn’t so sick — got?

The researchers got some very troubling answers. They reported Odds Risk ratios similar to smoking and lung cancer for vaccination and immune-mediated allergic rhinitis, for example. And a more than four-fold higher risk of vaccinated children having been diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum than unvaccinated children. We better have another study, the researchers concluded. A bigger and better study.

Round One: Suppressing the Study Results

Enter the Skeptics. When the Mawson paper was under review at Frontiers last year, a Skeptic named Leonid Schneider leapt into action.

“I pride myself to have caused the Frontiers anti-vaxx retraction with one tweet!” he tweeted. “The anti-vaxx paper was published as abstract, a reader alerted me, I tweeted, Frontiers got scared, pulled the paper.” Before it was published. It was never published. NEVER RETRACTED. Just tweeted away by Leonid and his Skeptic friends.

Most scientists are skeptical — they don’t like claims without evidence – but not all scientists are Skeptics. Skeptics are champions of objective scientific inquiry who fight against anything they see as irrational and unscientific, which is everything outside of pharmaceutical manufacturing interests. Functional Medicine is equal to Bigfoot to them. They know the difference between Good Thinking and Bad Thinking and some theories (like evolution) they think are very good and some ideas, like God, are particularly bad. They don’t like religion, but Skeptics can be quite dogmatic themselves about some things. Like vaccines. According to them, all vaccines are safe and effective. No one is ever injured by vaccines. Every child is healthier because of vaccines. The epidemic of childhood disorders is caused by something that is not vaccines. Questioning vaccines is heresy.

Retraction Watch, which bills itself as “a window into the scientific process,” got a little more involved than window-watching and inaccurately reported that the study was retracted, based on a Tweet. It ignored that accepting science on its merits, and then rejecting it on Tweets from those who disagree, is in violation of the publishing code of conduct. Not to mention that there is a big difference in the world of science between having a paper retracted – which implies scientific misconduct or gross scientific error – and having a paper declined because of disgruntled Tweets.

Frontiers publicly posts their retraction policy and affirms that they abide by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and recommendations in cases of potential retraction. Frontiers also abides by two other key principles, as recommended by COPE:

Retractions are not about punishing authors.

Retraction statements should be public and linked to the original, retracted article.

There was no retraction statement ever made or posted by Frontiers; therefore Retraction Watch’s statement about Dr. Mawson’s paper being retracted is inarguably false. This proven lie was used to interfere with and misconstrue Dr. Mawson’s research, resulting in a temporary removal of his article from The Journal of Translational Science pending an inquiry. Inquiry resolved, the articles have been reinstated on the journal’s website, demonstrating sufficient proof that the articles were never retracted as claimed by Retraction Watch.

Round Two: Discrediting the Study Results

Retraction Watch was again the first to misreport the retraction of the Mawson paper from the Journal of Translational Science last week. Rather than reporting on the facts, Retraction Watch took an activist role in the attempted takedown of Dr. Mawson’s research. Misconstruing and misrepresenting another scientist’s research is considered scientific misconduct. Retraction Watch still has (at the time of writing) an article posted that claims the paper has been doubly retracted. Their actions have a ripple effect, furthering the harm to Dr. Mawson and his younger colleagues, actions which are harmful to reputations, careers, and their future livelihoods. Snopes, the “fact-checking” entity, was still reporting that the papers were retracted because of methodological flaws, with only a tiny disclaimer at the bottom showing the papers restored to the Journal’s webpages. I pointed out the error to the editors and they updated the story today, without apology for inaccuracies.

Continuing to retain articles that are demonstrably and provably false on their website shows a lack of regard for the integrity and truth they espouse to protect. The public should be aware that their representations are not well researched and supported by the facts, and that the due diligence they claim to conduct in the interest of scientific integrity is not as it appears once you scratch the surface.

No answers have been forthcoming from Retraction Watch’s editor Alison Cook. She has not replied to my inquiries. Snopes founder David Mikkelson and managing editor Brooke Binkowski did not reply to messages. I did not receive explanations from the journal editors either.

The Digital Media Law Project publishes guidelines for publishing information that “harms the reputation of another person, group, or organization.” Injury to one’s reputation that stems from a falsehood is defamation, and claiming an article was retracted when it wasn’t is false, defamatory and should be corrected when notice and evidence has been provided to the author of the defamatory article. In the case of the Snopes article, the DMLP states “the republication of someone else’s words can itself be defamatory. In other words, you won’t be immune simply because you are quoting another person making the defamatory statement, even if you properly attribute the statement to its source.”

The DMLP also advises publications to “be prompt and give your correction the same prominent position that you gave the inaccurate information you previously posted.”

Can Snopes and Retraction Watch be Trusted?

The whole ordeal puts scientific publishing into a bad light. Can it be so easy to push editors out of publishing? Is the code of conduct meaningless? Don’t the researchers have recourse to defend their work if there are allegations against it, in a scholarly manner? Has science stooped so low, so beneath accepted standards of professionalism, that it is time to call in lawyers?

This disturbing event leaves the public bewildered. Is there something to worry about for our children’s health or not? Why did these researchers find such a high risk of autism and other disorders in vaccinated children? What are the possible mechanisms of immune system injury from vaccination in children?

The way the Mawson study was received undermines public trust in a system that is meant to be seeking better health for humanity. It will continue to erode so long as it fails to answer these questions that our children need answers to, now.

The Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI)is a medical and scientific collaborative established to provide research funding for independent studies on causal factors underlying the chronic disease and disability epidemic.

Celeste McGovern is an award-winning independent journalist in Scotland. She reports on medical news, drug scandals, alternative health and more at www.ghostshipmedia.com.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

As I’ve been telling you for years, it’s easy to keep the public on your side if you regularly tout medical “breakthroughs” in the press. The latest innovation. The promise of a cure around the corner. The maybe-could-be discovery that will change the course of disease treatment forever.

In this case, a start-up called Tilos has one of those, for cancer. They say it’s an antibody their researchers came across while looking for a cure for MS. They stumbled on to it by accident. Aha.

Somehow, this antibody helps the immune system to recognize and wipe out cancer cells. It produces “a memory” in immune-system cells, and they are ready to go to war when cancer arrives. Or something. It’s hard to say.

The people at Tilos are, naturally, very enthusiastic.

So forthwith, I give you an assignment. Keep track of stories about this amazing antibody as time passes, and see whether it ever a) becomes a real cancer treatment, and b) does any good. Or c) disappears down the memory hole, never to be heard from again. I’m betting on c. Why? Because I’ve watched a number of these flashes dim out quickly and recede into nowhere land. And because, in this case, the company is very far from being able to fashion the antibody into a ground-level treatment. Of course, it’s possible that, on the basis of the recent gaudy announcement, Tilos could pick up some investor funding, but funding isn’t a disease treatment the last time I looked.

On the other hand, if a non-pharmaceutical company or researcher actually makes a promising discovery in cancer treatment (read about the troubles of Dr. Stan Burzynski, Dr. Willam Koch, Royal Rife, etc.), all hell breaks loose. The press immediately pounces on the researcher as if he’s working on an H-bomb in his basement. He must be an outright quack and charlatan, “because they all are.”

Corporate drug outfit=potential breakthrough.

Independent non-pharmaceutical researcher=Dr. Nazi.

Good press vs. bad press comes down to: how much can you pay; who do you know; how much advertising can you afford to buy; what official expert can you bring on board to vouch for you; is your product a drug rather than a detested natural non-patentable substance; can you do officially recognized clinical trials; are you connected with a favored group (university, research foundation, federal facility, pharma lab) who can obtain publication in a well-known medical journal.

Or are you a dreaded INDEPENDENT?

In the 1990s, I watched a federal trial in a Los Angeles courtroom. The defendant was charged with selling medical drugs without a license to practice medicine.

The defendant was prepared to argue that a) the substance he was selling was naturally produced in the body and b) it was effective.

The prosecution moved to exclude such testimony, on the grounds that it was irrelevant.

The judge agreed. Therefore, the trial was nasty, brutish, and short. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to prison for several years.

This is how the federal bureaucracy operates. “Do you have a government-issued license to heal? No? You’re a criminal.”

I believe that if Jesus of Nazareth were walking the Earth today, in the United States, he would be arrested on the same grounds.

This would be particularly so if he were curing cancer.

Imagine this extreme case: in a stadium packed with 50,000 people who have been diagnosed with cancer, Jesus of Nazareth waves his hand and cures all of them in a few seconds.

Now he is threatening the profits of many companies, to say nothing of the power of the government, which backs the chemo-radiation-surgery monopoly to the hilt.

So he is arrested. He is put on trial. He opts to defend himself without an attorney. He tells the court that curing cancer is no crime.

The prosecuting attorney objects. “Your Honor,” he says, “whether or not this man has cured cancer is beside the point. He has no license to practice medicine. That is why we are here today. We are simply establishing that a) he was practicing medicine and b) he has no government-issued license. That is the scope of this proceeding.”

The judge agrees. The verdict is issued. Guilty.

Of course, on another front, the major media, who depend for their existence on pharmaceutical advertising, take the ball and run with it. The networks and major newspapers seek out “experts,” who emphatically state that what Jesus of Nazareth “performed” in the stadium was mere hypnotism. It was all a placebo effect. Whatever sudden “remissions” may have occurred are just temporary. Tragically, the cancers will return.

Not only that, these 50,000 people have effectively been sidetracked and diverted from seeking “real care from real doctors.” With chemo, with radiation, with surgery, they would have stood a chance of surviving and living long normal lives.

Other media pundits send up this flag: “Many of those present in the stadium were bitter clingers to their religion. They refuse to accept science. They are living in the past. They favor superstition over real medical care. In fact, they are threatening the whole basis of healthcare, since other confused and deluded Americans may now turn away from doctors and seek snake-oil salesmen and preachers for healing.”

From the highest perches of political power in this country, the word quietly goes out to the media: don’t follow up on those people who were in the stadium; don’t try to track them; don’t compile statistics on their survival rates; move on to other stories (distractions); let this whole madness die down.

But among the citizenry, an awareness spreads: the government is controlling healing through its issuance of licenses. That’s how the government is essentially protecting one form of “healing” and enabling it to become an all-encompassing cartel.

What would be the alternative or the adjunct to licenses?

Contracts.

Contracts are agreements entered into by consenting adults, who assume responsibility for the outcomes. In the case of healing, a contract would specify that people have a right to be wrong.

Let’s say two consenting adults, Jim and Frank, agree to allow Frank to treat Jim for his arthritis with water from a well on Frank’s land.

The two men acknowledge that no liability will be attached to the outcome. In other words, whether Jim get better or gets worse, no one is going file a suit. No one is going to go to the government for redress of wrongs.

The well water may be wonderful or it may be completely useless. Both men understand and acknowledge that. But they assert a right to try the treatment, because they are free.

Immediately people say, “This is ridiculous. Water can’t cure arthritis. Frank is cheating Jim. Jim is a victim. He needs to see a doctor. He needs to go on arthritis drugs.”

No, Jim doesn’t have to do anything. He is free.

To put it another way, Jim has the right to be right or wrong. It’s his decision, which is beyond the scope of any authority.

If government tries to remove that right from all of us, it is essentially saying it knows what is correct, it knows what is true, it knows what we need and require, and it’s going to give it to us even if it has to shove it down our throats. Does that sound like freedom to you?

If Jesus of Nazareth lived in the United States today, and if he went around curing cancer, he would be arrested. He wouldn’t be charged with blasphemy or treason. He would be charged with something much simpler and more mundane: practicing medicine without a license.

And he would be convicted and sentenced.

Because then and now, the government, in its throne of corruption, wants to protect its proprietary and illegal interests.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with making sure that drugs and medical devices are safe and efficient for Americans to use. However, it appears that the agency doesn’t take its job seriously enough, because a new study shows that nearly 1/3 of medications approved from 2001 to 2010 had safety issues years after they were made widely available to patients, and some were quite serious. [1]

The study, published May 9 in JAMA, shows that 71 of the 222 drugs approved during that time period were withdrawn, required a “black box” due to their side effects, or warranted a safety announcement about new risks.

Source: Center for American Progress

Dr. Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, says:

“While the [Trump] administration pushes for less regulation and faster approvals, those decisions have consequences.”

A 2015 independent analysis of drugs approved using the agency’s expedited approval process found that the trend of speeding approval “is being driven by drugs that are not first in class and thus potentially are less innovative.” [2]

But President Trump isn’t the first president to pressure the FDA to speed up its drug approvals.

On December 13, 2016, President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act. The law provides speedier routes to approval by pushing the FDA to consider evidence beyond the normal 3 phases of clinical trials. The move upset many researchers who feared the law would allow the approval of drugs that haven’t been adequately studied.

Says Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and professor at Oregon Health and Sciences University, who wasn’t involved in the study:

“I’m actually sympathetic to the idea that there are ways in which the FDA can be more streamlined and do a quicker job. The one place you don’t want to cut a corner is safety and efficacy prior to coming to market.”

According to the study, during the first decade of the millennium, the FDA approved drugs faster than the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the majority of clinical trials in drug approvals involved fewer than 1,000 participants, and lasted 6 months or less, according to the findings. [1]

On average, it took 4 years and 2 months after the drugs were approved for safety issues to emerge. The most troublesome drugs included psychiatric medications, biologic drugs, drugs granted “accelerated approval,” and drugs that gained approval at the tail end of the regulatory period.

But drugs that were granted accelerated approval had the worst track record. Dr. Nicholas S. Downing, an author of the study and a resident physician of internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says:

“The key message with all new drugs and technology is that there is an ongoing learning process that will continue through the lifetime of the drug.

Downing says that scientists need to continuously test drugs to make sure they work with a wide range of variables, and used aspirin as an example. The medication has been used for hundreds of years, yet “there are still countless new studies coming out, and we learn more about it all the time.” [2]